Nazi Saboteurs in the Amagansett Sands

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Photographs in the exhibition, left: officers examining wrapping used for the buried explosives. Clockwise from center top: shovels used by the saboteurs; the cap worn by George John Dasch, leader of the saboteurs; German cigarettes found in the dunes; and a satchel used to carry cash.CreditCreditFranklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.

By Aileen Jacobson

Sept. 12, 2014

It could have been just another quiet evening in Amagansett, but that changed dramatically after a 21-year-old Coast Guard seaman stumbled upon four suspicious-looking men hanging out on a beach during his regular late-night patrol.

“June 13, 1942: Saboteurs Land in Amagansett,” a new exhibition at the East Hampton Historical Society’s Clinton Academy Museum, presents the details and consequences of that discovery, when a Nazi submarine ran aground on a sandbar near the local Coast Guard station just after midnight. The four saboteurs rowed ashore in a rubber dinghy filled with explosives, clothing, cash and a plan to blow up aluminum and magnesium plants, canals, bridges and other structures over the coming two years.

They tried to bribe Seaman John C. Cullen, but he ran back to the station and reported the incident to its commander, Warren Barnes. The saboteurs, along with four others who had landed in Florida, were later caught and put on trial.

Besides a story that made national headlines, the exhibition features memorabilia that evokes the usual humdrum life inside the Coast Guard station — a menu that included grilled bologna with ketchup and franks in tomato sauce, a receipt for a hefty amount of candy — along with the goings-on of civilian life in the early ’40s. An enlargement of the front page of The East Hampton Star published two days before the saboteurs landed features news of a garden club sale and a theater group meeting.

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The tribunal at the Department of Justice.CreditLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

“Ultimately, the exhibit is a story of everyday people living ordinary lives in extraordinary times,” said Elizabeth Neill, the curator. “I hope it gives a sense of what was going on, of the personalities of the people, of stepping into that day in history.”

The exhibition started to take shape about a year ago when the Historical Society received a gift of uniforms, newspaper clippings and other items that had belonged to Commander Barnes and his wife, Lydia. It came from Larry Barnes, their only child, and his wife, Phyllis, who said they had found the cache in a bureau drawer upstairs at the Barnes family residence in East Hampton. They called the society to donate it.

“We were thrilled,” said Richard Barons, the society’s executive director, who had long wanted to put together a World War II-era exhibition. He enlisted Ms. Neill, who worked at the society part-time during her four years at Dartmouth and is now a student at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan. The assistant curator is Isabel Carmichael, who is also the assistant to the director.

Ms. Carmichael has a family connection to the exhibition. She spent her childhood summers in the former Coast Guard station and has joined a committee dedicated to restoring it.

Built in 1902, the station closed in 1938, a year after the commander retired. It was recommissioned in January 1942 (as was the commander), a month after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered the war. In 1944, it closed again, and was left abandoned until 1966, when Ms. Carmichael’s father, Joel, a writer, editor and translator, bought it, moved it to a bluff overlooking the dunes and converted it into a private residence. After his death in 2006, Ms. Carmichael said, she and her siblings donated the house to the Town of East Hampton. A year later, it was returned to its original position.

Ms. Carmichael said she grew up hearing the historical lore, including what happened in the early-morning hours after the saboteurs were found. After burying their stash of explosive devices, cigarettes and other items, and marking the spot with a shovel and swimming trunks (which the commander and others discovered and dug up around 3 a.m.), they headed to the Amagansett train station.

George John Dasch, their leader, who had spent time in the United States and spoke good English, bought tickets for the earliest train, the 6:59 a.m. A photo of the station and a 1942 train schedule are among the items on display. Ms. Carmichael said she had also heard — though she can’t substantiate it — that the stationmaster had suspected that something was amiss because they had to ask when the next train would leave. “Anybody from Amagansett knew,” she said.

Though the Federal Bureau of Investigation was alerted, they didn’t find the men until Mr. Dasch called an F.B.I. office the next day, saying he would call again a few days later from Washington, which he did. There is only speculation about his reasons for doing this. The F.B.I. eventually arrested Mr. Dasch and his cohorts, and then proceeded to try to take all the credit for foiling the plot. A newsreel starring J. Edgar Hoover that Ms. Neill tracked down doesn’t mention the Coast Guard. The Historical Society bought rights to use the two-minute reel from Pathé, the newsreel archive — for $900, but worth it, Mr. Barons said — and it runs continuously during exhibition hours.

Greeting visitors to the exhibition are two mannequins wearing uniforms that belonged to the commander, including the one that Mr. Barons said was “very likely” worn on that eventful day. Ms. Neill, guessing that the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park might have information, since President Roosevelt was involved in the saboteurs’ trial, contacted the library and found they had “so many boxes with things nobody had looked at.” The boxes included dozens of photographs of the evidence used by the prosecution and one of the Coast Guard’s lookout tower, which no longer exists and “had kind of disappeared from local visual memory,” she said.

As for the eight men who landed on Long Island and in Florida, all were found guilty and sentenced to death. However, President Roosevelt commuted the sentences of Dasch to 30 years and Ernest Peter Burger, another saboteur who provided evidence, to life in prison. Or, as a newspaper headline put it: “6 Spies Must Die! Roosevelt will spare 2.”

Correction:Sept. 21, 2014

An article in some editions last Sunday about German saboteurs on Long Island during World War II misidentified the woman who contacted the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park for more information on the crew. She is Elizabeth Neill, the curator of an exhibition on the episode at the East Hampton Historical Society’s Clinton Academy Museum — not Phyllis Barnes. (Ms. Barnes’s father-in-law, Cmdr. Warren Barnes, headed the Coast Guard station that reported the saboteurs’ arrival.)